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Tag: itunes

As much as I loved the first season of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods on Amazon Prime Video UK, I’m reluctant to buy it on Blu-Ray or it’s current version on iTunes for one particular reason: while it was shot in Ultra-High Definition (aka 4K), and I can watch it as often as I like on Amazon in UHD, I can’t buy it in any form in UHD – especially UHD Blu-Ray.

It’s a bit ironic that American Gods has a character called Technical Boy who “invites” people into his limousine via virtual reality. In reality, however, I cannot easily buy a TV series in UHD.

The biggest problem with the TV industry at the moment is that only a subset of it (generally the two largest online streaming services – Netflix & Amazon Prime Video) is producing content in UHD. It is also still costly to mass produce UHD content on physical media. In the film industry, for example, not all films are given releases in UHD. Only the really big blockbuster movies are getting the UHD Blu-Ray treatment at the moment, and those cost between £20-£25 each, about £10-15 more than regular Blu-Ray.

Making UHD content available to buy via download or streaming is a different matter. Though that too introduces some hurdles. Do you really get to keep the content? As I found out recently with the BBC Store – if that goes away, so does any content you’ve bought. But thankfully the BBC refunded me entirely and even gave me a bit of a bonus to use with Amazon – for streaming content (whether to rent or buy – I used it to rent).

Apple is said to be announcing a 4K/UHD capable Apple TV next week. This is all well and good, but unless Apple has 4K content to go with it, the upgrade won’t be worth it. The 4th generation Apple TV has been okay for the most part, and practically all my HD content I’ve purchased (or rented) has been excellent (with the exception of Breaking Bad – we need iTunes Extra for TV shows, Apple!). But the biggest problem with the Apple TV has been the lack of support from UK broadcasters. I’m still waiting for ITV Hub, Channel 4, Channel 5 and other UK broadcasters to pull their fingers out of their bottoms and develop their catch-up apps for it.

But I still concede that iTunes/Apple TV is still the best method of buying and keeping content. If Apple can get 4K/UHD on there, it’ll be a start.

I believe it’s about time that at least one broadcasting company steps up to bat and starts to invest in UHD outside of just making content and streaming it as part of a subscription service. It has taken a very, very long time to get to UHD/4K televisions, and yet support for it outside the streaming ecosystem is still very poor.

Starz – please let me buy American Gods in UHD. Either in UHD Blu-Ray or via iTunes (in 4K/UHD) when the hardware is available. Or even both!

With news that iTunes’ share of video sales and rentals are falling against competitors such as Amazon (Prime) Video and other services, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on why iTunes is the better platform for buying movies digitally, despite my brain screaming at me, “Look what happened to the digital BBC Store.”

iTunes offers iTunes Extras of which an increasing number of titles are including the same features as physical media. Audio commentaries are regularly included, for example. No other service offers this.

iTunes has one of the best device allowances of any service – and this includes the ability to download the content to a Mac, Windows PC, iPad and/or iPhone.

The UI of iTunes is much better than that of the competitors. The Apple TV, not so much, but still considerably better than most. Therefore it’s easier to manage existing titles. And in all the years I’ve been buying movies from iTunes, I’ve never lost a single title due to film studios deciding to withdraw from the platform. This could change, of course, but I’m sure if that happened, consumers would be lining up to lynch whoever decided it was a good idea to do so.

In terms of renting, Amazon (Prime) Video very narrowly outshines iTunes. There’s almost always a promotion which allows me to pay far less for renting an HD title via Amazon (Prime) Video than iTunes. For example, I’ve just rented Hidden Figures (*superb* film) and T2: Trainspotting (also very good) – both in HD – £2.49 for both titles. Amazon Video is baked into my LG television, making it very easy to access.

Don’t get me started on the UltraViolet digital platform. It’s a completely useless pile of sputum devised by the film studios to make them look kind and generous by providing a non-physical digital copy of a film. The truth is that it’s a massive pain in the arse to manage and I don’t bother with it anymore. TalkTalk’s app (TalkTalk having bought Blinkbox which in turn is an UltraViolet partner) for LG televisions is awful. I accept that one has to log in again occasionally, but the process is just stupid. Look at what Google is doing for logging in to YouTube – much, much easier for televisions. Entering a password via a remote control is the epitome of piss-poor user interface design. But TalkTalk isn’t the only one guilty of this crime (NOW TV, Amazon, and even Netflix are guilty – but their TV apps allow for significantly long log in times).

BTW, I also hate the Amazon Prime Video UI too – it makes discovery difficult and it seems so random that I rarely watch anything on the service other than the really big TV productions. I watched the German comedy, Toni Erdmann the other day (very, very funny – especially the nude party scene), but I had to manually enable the subtitles (found under CC for closed captioning – usually referencing subtitles for the hard of hearing – in my case, hard of not knowing enough German to understand the film without English subtitles).

The only other service I’ve purchased films from is Google Play. I can watch the films on a tablet, my phone and even my TV through the YouTube app. But those titles are generally either freebies or were heavily discounted.

Otherwise, I’ll be sticking with iTunes for future film purchases. The next one, in fact, will probably be Hidden Figures because it was just such a great film, and there’s an audio commentary included in iTunes Extras which should give the film even more value.

My biggest fear with buying digital only copies of films and television shows is if the provider goes away – whether it’s due to bankruptcy, change of direction – whatever. As I’ve been sticking with the iTunes ecosystem for the majority of the time, I trust Apple to do the right thing and ensure I am able to download and watch my movies regardless of whatever happens to the movie or TV studio that supplied them with the content. So far so good.

But, alas, the poor old BBC has announced that it’ll be shutting down its all digital BBC Store from 1st November 2017. I’ve used BBC Store a number of times over the past 18 months, amassing a few titles here and there. It was relatively cheap, and they often had many titles on sale. My biggest complaint with the BBC Store, however, is actually watching the titles on my TV. What a pain in the arse that was. The BBC iPlayer baked into my LG TV, Apple TV, plus the games consoles I used to have, never supported BBC Store titles. And there was no native BBC Store app for them either. Thus I had to buy a Google Chromecast to be able to cast the content from my mobile phone to it. No problem watching the content on my phone or tablet, but it’s not ideal – and this is why I think the BBC has failed – it felt as if it didn’t put enough resources into developing the BBC iPlayer integration or BBC Store apps across multiple platforms.

(Ironically, as the mega corporate AT&T is set to buy Time Warner, Inc. and take over HBO – AT&T’s boss has been semi-joking that he wants to provide 20 minute mobile friendly episodes of Game of Thrones – this sort of thing horrifies me – I’m all about choice, but the important thing is that television is television and should be viewed as (and on) such)

Another problem with BBC Store is that many of BBC’s titles are available on the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime. The BBC has said that it wasn’t able to compete with these services, but I still say they just did not put enough effort or resources into making the content available across platforms as easily as Netflix or Amazon Prime (which, BTW, should be coming to Apple TV next month if rumours are true).

Ultimately it’s a slap in the face for digital TV and movie consumption. But I also ask: is TV and film going the same way as music? Do people actually prefer to pay a monthly subscription fee to consume as much content as possible, rather than simply buy a title outright? While the BBC is refunding those of us for the content we’ve paid for (plus, very ironically, a £20 Amazon voucher for similar digital content), it doesn’t make it easy for us to be able to repurchase the content elsewhere. With content providers bemoaning that piracy is ruining the entertainment industry – it forgets very easily that if more effort was made to make the content available quickly and cheaply, and across as many platforms as possible, their rhetoric might be a bit more believable!

I’m no fan of flying, but I have to admit that 2009 emergency landing of United Airlines flight 1549 into the Hudson river was one of the most spectacular and miraculous stories to come out of aviation history. It made you appreciate how much experience some pilots have, and their ability to make lifesaving decisions so quickly is just extraordinary.

This is the story of that incident, but in particular, it is the story of Captain Sullenberger and the subsequent NTSB investigation into how Sully and his co-pilot handled the situation. This movie was a long time coming, and it’s pretty decent.

Tom Hanks plays Captain “Sully” Sullenberger – a man with over 40 years flying experience. Starting from flying a crop duster plane, to flying military aircraft, to a commercial airline pilot, Sully has spent a great deal of time in the air. And he also ran his own air incident investigations too.

We get to see a recreation of the disaster (a bird strike which took out BOTH engines) with visual effects supplied by my former employers, MPC. Unfortunately, I felt that MPC’s efforts weren’t up to their usual high standards – the aircraft model and environment felt far too much like Microsoft’s Flight Simulator. That said, I will give MPC credit where it’s due to the actual recreation of the rescue in the Hudson river. The invisible effects are better than the in-your-face effects.

Clint Eastwood – for it is he – directs well enough. The performance from Tom Hanks and the rest of the cast is very good, though I did feel it was a little forced in some areas – that is to say, it feels a little too over melodramatic. Sully feels a bit like a Movie of the Week rather than something that’s more solid. Nevertheless, you felt like cheering during the NTSB hearing in which Sully calmly takes down the investigators’ flight simulations – proving they were completely flawed.

All in all, Sully is a good 90-minute insight into what happened that fateful day. A little overplayed, maybe, but still entertaining.

As I await my Samsung Galaxy S8+ pre-order to arrive later next month, I have started planning the migration from iPhone’s iOS to the Galaxy’s Android OS. Setting up a new phone always takes forever and a day, so getting prepared is always a good thing.

One thing that I love what Google have done is that the Play store remembers all previous purchases and downloads. I had to use a special SMS application on Android (though I believe this is handled natively) to be able to trigger repeat SMS notifications – for when I’m on call. I couldn’t remember what it was called, but I’ve just gone into my account at the Play store’s web site and found it (Textra, in case you’re interested). The major advantage of accessing one’s previous accessed apps this way is that you can then install them via the web too!

I had considered switching from Apple Music to Spotify, but then remembered that Apple Music is also available on Android. So I don’t need to make any changes to my subscription, nor do I need to ditch iTunes completely – which isn’t something I’m prepared to do. I’m definitely keeping the Mac – it’s merely the phone and watch that are changing.

In terms of photos, I used to keep everything in the iCloud Photo Library. My biggest worry was something happening at Apple that could have wiped the entire lot – so I’ve disabled the service, downgraded by iCloud storage, and intend to move everything over to Adobe Lightroom (which forms part of my Photoshop subscription) which has its own Android app for accessing photos. To transfer to the Mac, I just need a USB-C to USB-C cable, and import them directly into Lightroom. I’m so glad that Samsung have stuck with USB-C .

I don’t think there are specific apps that I use on iOS that aren’t available for Android. The main issue may be that some apps look a bit odd on the Galaxy S8+’s longer display, but as Google is actively encouraging developers to adapt their apps to this format, we should start to see some truly attractive apps.

What I’m REALLY looking forward to, and what is pushing me most towards the S8+ is that I felt that with the Note 7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge, the cellular performance was far, far better than the iPhone 7 Plus. It is no exaggeration to say that at times I find connectivity on the iPhone to be sluggish. But it was never an issue with the Note 7, S7 Edge and even the Google Pixel. Are Intel’s modems that much worse than Qualcomm’s? I don’t know, but it sure feels like it. When you’re out and about, you don’t want sluggish network performance.

Also: wireless charging. I still have my fast wireless chargers and hope that they will work with the S8+. They’re incredibly useful to have around.

The only downside, I guess, is that I’ll lose access to iMessage. This messaging service from Apple allows two iPhone users to directly message each other without utilising the SMS network (or if one user is out of range of internet access, it will revert to SMS). As most of the family are on WhatsApp, this will make things much easier – but there are still a few people I need to convert.

Other things that I hope to experience with the Galaxy S8+: Virtual Reality. In the US, Samsung are bundling their VR headgear and controller along with a nice pair of good quality earphones as part of the pre-order deal. In the UK? Nope. Nada. Diddly squat. But I’m sure that at some point I’ll get a chance to check it out. VR is the Next Big Thing(tm) and I would like to be a part of it. The 360 4K video camera is certainly intriguing. How I’d love to take that with me to Iceland in a few months time.

So lots to look forward to, and lots to do when I do get the kit (including then selling everything else to pay for it!), but I’m somebody who doesn’t stand still when it comes to technology.